Robot vacuum cleaners - now with grenade launchers Many people believe that famed cybernetics company iRobot only makes droid vacuum cleaners - for instance the nifty yet slatternly "Roomba" autodrudge. But iRobot also makes more sinister machines, for instance the new "Warrior X700", which it has just sold to the US Army's tanks'n'trucks R&D arm. Weighing about 450 pounds all …
I reckon some of the contestants on Robot Wars looked better and more destructive than the Warrior X700. Sgt Bash would have given it a run for their money - Sir Killalot would have wiped it out as it was bigger and heavier.
Maybe some of the builders of the contestants should consider supplying the US army - could be a very lucrative sidline.
Heheh, we appear to be browsing Jane's Register at the moment, what with Dredd's Lawgiver, Military Helicoptors, Combat Aircraft etc hitting this publication.
Not that I mind, but I'd like to know what Lewis has been doing recently, like perhaps he went to an arms convention recently and came back bursting with "intel"!
Oh and one of the advantages of Metal Storm is that you could load some barrels with non-lethal munition. However, some would say that a 40mm rubber bullet is about as friendly as "friendly fire", and others that it's a waste of a barrel.
Paris, cos I know they sell guns with bimbos at these conventions. Heh, maybe even a potential Vice Presidential commendation!
iRobot products have been serving in Iraq for some time, some personnel have even developed emotional ties to the (not quite autonomous) droids that have saved their lives! Less said about that the better I expect (ahem.) Anyway, the roomba, being somewhat more autonomous as it can be left to its own devices, can be hacked and its original payload can be swapped out for explosives and a heat-seeking module. Wouldn't this come in useful in Iraq? If only it had an all-terrain chassis.
>Any chance of SI units?
Ah, but the site is run by people from the UK, and the majority of our population still thinks in (useful) Imperial measures, not SI (which is based on standards that are totally arbitrary, rather than real-world useful, and using a useless base 10 instead of the more friendly 12. Oh, and they got the calculations wrong, so they're even more pointless).
Oh, and don't you mean Americanised?
Mine is the one with a copy of "Hacking the Roomba", a Wii remote and 256 drams of high explosive in the pocket.
...actually, no. There is no defense for the Imperial system of weights and measures.
You might be able to defend adding 2 more characters to the numbers we use and converting to base-12 for all arithmetical operations, but the Imperial system used base 12 for almost no conversions (inches per foot and pennies per shilling are the only ones that spring readily to mind), and its worst fault is that it used different bases for different orderst of magnitude: 12/20 for money, 16/14 for weight, 20/8/god-knows-what for volume and 12/3/22/20/4 for distance, so it was not a simple arithmetic to convert from one "level" to the next. And it was even more difficult to convert between size and volume: how many fluid ounces are there in a cubic yard?
And the standards set in Imperial are still arbitrary: what weighs a pound? A pint of poor quality (i.e. low fat) milk? I'd make a mint selling cloth by the clothyard compared to someone a foot taller than my 166cm.
I remember the bit in "1984" where the old codger was bemoaning the advent of the litre and half litre vs the pint "a half litre [of beer] wasn't enough, and a litre was too much" and remember sympathising a little with him when I first read it. But that was before I started drinking, and now, to paraphrase a brace of hobbits:
"What's that?"
"A litre."
"It comes in litres?!"
But they'd better not try charging the same for a half litre as the do for a pint...
>In defense of Imperial
I don't know if I misread AC1s posting, but I'm afraid I tend to agree with it. To me, it seemed like (s)he was saying "Imperial is better than metric", which, despite the flaws you've pointed out, is still fundamentally a much better system than metric. I'm not even sure it wasn't a joke - I had to look up what weight a "dram" was.
I absolutely agree with your points about base though - metric is good in that it sticks with 10. 12 is a much better base for measurements, but Imperial fails by using it inconsistently.
I thought metric was better until I read "About the Size of it: The Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things" by Warwick Cairns.
Anyway, back to the point - I have a Roomba, and it has two massive problems when it comes to warfare - first, it can barely carry a cat, let alone a decent weapon payload. Second, it doesn't do stairs.
I was also thinking "Scutter", just like everyone else, but that gave me a shudder of dread - there was an episode where the Scutters bred. I don't mind robots breeding if all they do is housework, watch John Wayne movies and swear at smegheads, but when one is carrying weapons, that's a different story...
I still don't think we should arm the machines, any more than we should arm the humans!
While I have no idea why somebody would prefer to do base 12 or 14 arithmetic in their head -- ny point was that everyone invlved in science ought tlo be familiar with the basic units as it should be part of learning science -- pounds and the like are, however, units some of us would have to learn only to communicate with those who haven't studied science.
... a new manufacturing division called the Sirius Cybernetics Corp? Then the device with Genuine People Personality (GPP) could really complain that 'all the diodes down my left side' are now not only aching but missing after it drops the rock on the munition.
What's an overpressure of 43 ft/lbs per cubic fortnight in SI / ElReg units?
Vale Douglas
Mine's the one with Kevlar inserts
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